Puccini’s La bohème premieres in Turin, Italy
By the time the first of his three career-defining operas had its premiere Giacomo Puccini was no longer living a life of impoverished artistic struggle.His previous opera Manon Gascaut had made his name in the world of Italian opera and more important it had earned him a significant advance on his next work.With his debts repaid and a country villa acquired Puccini was no longer a starving artist but rather an up-and-coming star embraced by the artistic establishment.
It was perhaps the perfect vantage point from which to create a work that so famously romanticizes the passionate struggles of the artistic class La bohme which was performed for the very first time on this day in 1896 at the Teatro Regio in Turin Italy.The libretto of La bohme was based on the immensely popular Scnes de la Vie de Bohme Henri Murgers 1845 collection of stories depicting the lives and loves of a group of young Parisian Bohemiansa label that Murgers work helped popularize.(The label refers to the supposed geographic origins of the Gypsies whose itinerant out-of-the-mainstream ways seemed an apt comparison to the alternative lifestyles being led by the growing class of artist-types living in Europes urban centers.) From Murgers stories Puccini drew his cast of characters Colline the philosopher Rodolfo the poet Marcello the painter Schaunard the musician and Marcello and Rodolfos respective love interests the singer Musetta and the doomed seamstress Mim.In choosing to write La bohme Puccini was choosing to involve himself in his own real-life drama.Puccinis friend the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo was working on an opera of his own also based on Scnes de la Vie de Bohme and also called La bohme.
Puccinis pursuit of the project cost him his friendship with Leoncavallo who is nevertheless famous for his 1892 opera Pagliacci but whose own La bohme completed one year after Puccinis is now almost never performed.Puccinis La bohme on the other hand is second on the list of the worlds most-performed operas behind only his own Madama Butterfly the third of his acknowledged masterworks (Tosca being the second).Even those who are not opera fans may be more familiar with La bohme than they realize Puccinis opera acted as inspiration and source material for the late Jonathan Larson in creating the Broadway smash Rent.
